Answer: To find the longest substring of consecutive identical characters in a given string, you can use the following code segment: 1. Initialize variables to keep track of the longest streak and the current streak. Set both to 0. 2. Initialize a variable to store the character of the current streak. 3. Iterate through each character in the input string. 4. If the current character is equal to the character of the current streak, increment the current streak by 1. 5. If the current character is not equal to the character of the current streak, compare the current streak with the longest streak. 6. If the current streak is greater than the longest streak, update the longest streak and the character of the longest streak. 7. Reset the current streak to 1 and update the character of the current streak. 8. After the loop, compare the current streak with the longest streak one more time to handle the case where the longest streak occurs at the end of the string. 9. Print the character of the longest streak and its length. Here's an example implementation of the code segment: ``` public static void longestStreak(String str) { int longestStreak = 0; int currentStreak = 0; char currentChar = '\0'; // initialize with a null character for (char c : str.toCharArray()) { if (c == currentChar) { currentStreak++; } else { if (currentStreak > longestStreak) { longestStreak = currentStreak; } currentStreak = 1; currentChar = c; } } if (currentStreak > longestStreak) { longestStreak = currentStreak; } System.out.println("Longest streak: " + currentChar + " " + longestStreak); } ``` For example, if you call `longestStreak("CCAAAAATTT!")`, the code will output "A 5" because the longest substring of consecutive identical characters is "AAAAA".